Delivering the message on his favourite platform, US President Donald Trump tweeted that Kim Jong Un made "a very wise and well reasoned decision."
The alternative, he said "would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!"
President Trump stunned the world last week by warning North Korea it faced "fire and fury" if it continued to threaten the US or its allies with its ballistic missile program.
The comments, while on what he calls "a working holiday" in New Jersey, were widely interpreted as raising the prospect of a nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea.
Speaking during a trip to South America, US Vice President Mike Pence maintains all options are still on the table.
"The era of strategic patience is over. Literally for decades the world community has practised a patience with North Korea in the hopes that they would some day abandon their nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions, and all along the way North Korea has simply used delay and used feigned negotiations to continue in their headlong rush to obtain usable nuclear weapons and a ballistic missile program and the President has made it clear that those days are over."
But he did hint at some optimism.
"We believe that the ongoing economic and diplomatic pressure being brought to bear by our allies in the region, by allies here in Latin America and renewed pressure by China itself is resulting in, what we believe, represent glimmers of hope that we can achieve by peaceful means which nations around the world have sought on the Korean peninsula now for decades."
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, also on a visit to South America, says options for economic sanctions against North Korea have been exhausted.
"Regarding the means of influence on Pyongyang in order to make them fulfil the UN Security Council resolutions - we are absolutely certain that possibilities for economic pressure have been exhausted. We can't support some of our partners' ideas which are directed at economic suffocation of North Korea with all the tragic negative economic consequences for its citizens."
The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, says it's time now to focus on diplomacy rather than rhetoric.
"It is so important to dial down rhetoric and to dial up diplomacy. For my part I want to repeat that my good offices are always available, and I conveyed this message yesterday to the representatives of the six-party talks. The solution to this crisis must be political. The potential consequences of military action are too horrific to even contemplate."
